Anyone else not care for Lindsey's Tusk stuff?

[Hawkeye]

and the whole band's on Tusk.

Literally. The whole USC marching band's on Tusk

[Johnny Stew]

Originally Posted by dissention

I completely agree, Christy, but not when it comes to "Ghosts" and "That Made Me Stronger." I mean, c'mon. Those are nauseating.

Originally Posted by sodascouts

Definitely cringe-worthy.

(I'm running the risk of starting another pages-long debate, but here I go again....)

I'm not the biggest fan of "That Made Me Stronger," but I think "Ghosts" is beautiful, and ranks right up there with some of Stevie's best ballads.

In my opinion, both songs accomplish exactly what they're supposed to: they reflect Stevie's emotions at the time she wrote them. They're basically diary pages, so of course they're going to be "self-indulgent."
And songs like that will always be "nauseating" and "cringe-worthy" to some, because it's nearly impossible to accurately and honestly reflect those particular emotions in a song, without turning at least some people off.

And I still think the following "Ghosts" lyric is brilliant, even though I know some folks think it's corny and/or unrelatable: "To fill the empty spaces she's feeling, she depends on her music like a husband... and she knows it's no good to fall in love again."

Moves me everytime I hear it.

But it's ok... we can't all like the same things, or be moved by the same things, otherwise the world (and these boards) would be a boring place indeed.

[strandinthewind]

ITA agree that Ghosts is to me just brilliant. TMMS is oksy and its a great sentiment. I just think the chorus is too literal for my liking. But I think even "bad" Stevie, LB, CM, or FM is better than 99% of the other stuff out there

[Hawkeye]

I love Ghosts right up until the she depends on her music like a husband bridge thing. But I lvoe the first 2 minutes of the song. The whole Ghosts of what you want thing is great.

And That Made Me Stronger, that song is so danmed literal it's nausiating. It's straight out of what she said all those interviews leading up to TISL. I guess this is one case of self indulgence beiong too much

[Hawkeye]

But I could never be a huge fan of a group that did catchy pop tunes.

.


I don't see how someone can consider Rumours catchy pop tunes. They really aren't at all. A band like Journy, Styz or REO speedwagon make catchy pop tunes, Rumours is not that. The only songs that even come close to fitting that discription is Don't Stop and Dreams. GYOW, The Chain, GDW, Oh Daddy and Songbird are all far from catchy pop tunes.

[DownOnRodeo]

Am I right in understanding that you think a group of songs is better off being non-catchy?

Rumours is pretty esoteric, but it was also uber-crafted and catchy, and it suffered for that.

[DownOnRodeo]

Originally Posted by Lux

No, music is not necessarily better off being non-catchy. By that I assume we're referring to a product that is confined by the structures of those that were popular before it and one which is easily accessible to, and accepted by, a mass population, as opposed to the literal intepretation of the phrase.

I thought catchy meant a song was hooky and you hum it in the shower. Are we talking about the same thing?

[face of glass]

Originally Posted by Hippocampus

I understand what he was going for but the overall effort comes off to my ears as wanting to be experimental for the sake of it, to steer away from the "Rumours formula" to prove he's more than "corporate rock".

For me there’s nothing “experimental for the sake of it” attitude in Tusk. Yes, Lindsey did state that he loved recording those vocal tracks on his knees “because it sounded weird!” but in the rest I truly can not see it.

But that’s because of my background; after years of listening to the underground acts and the experimental de-rigeur, I can safely say that everything Lindsey does on Tusk is accessible and, although it might not find its audience from the average Rumours-buyers, it would find its audience from the underground, from the new wave that was emerging at the time. The freakish guitar onslaught of “Not That Funny” is child’s play when compared to anything Sonic Youth did in the ‘80s. So the experimental attitude didn’t jump at me first. What worked for me was the emotion that he managed to convey through the tunes.

He didn’t want Chris or Stevie to harmonize on his songs for a long time because he wanted to believe that they could be successes without them. And it was one of the biggest reasons for Rumours’ success, as were the biting lyrics. The lyrics on Tusk may be more biting for some but in my opinion they’ve been intentionally shrouded and sung so that some of them are incomprehensible. Clearly the focus is not just on the lyrical message.

This is clearly not a team effort, it's complete self-indulgence and I can understand why the others told him it would be the last time he'd go solo on the band's time.

Let’s not forget that there was an example for this in Fleetwood Mac already, what with Peter Green recording their “ultimate classic” “Oh Well” solely on his own with only the recorder solo being played by his girlfriend.

[Ponders a theory for a while. It’s not self-indulgence if he doesn’t credit it for himself, it’s self-indulgence if the album sleeve said: -Fleetwood Mac with seven tracks of Lindsey Buckingham solo- or –Lindsey Buckingham featuring Fleetwood Mac-. But now that he’s releasing it as a Fleetwood Mac album he gets more sales and gets to be self-indulgent secretly. HA! What a genius!]

Ok. I don’t believe that. Lindsey spoke of getting to more esoteric places when he recorded the material on his own. And I believe that he was right in taking this direction.

The tunes on Tusk are all about himself; his childishness and his naïve belief in the artistic expression. Their clumsiness and their self-centeredness are what make them so charming for me. The man appears more human in there than any group player and that was his way to take all that room. For many people Stevie Nicks was the main focus point in her own songs; they ignored the group playing that very often gave Stevie all the room to shine. Lindsey doesn’t have such performance abilities so it was natural for him to take up all that space in the recording sphere wherein his main weapon lies.

If Lindsey had started to play fast solos, ridiculously complex drum patterns (which he couldn’t do anyway) etc, then that would have been far more self-indulgent for me.

He chose this way because he always does what he thinks is the best for the song itself. Not because he wants to show us his instrumental prowess.

Originally Posted by sodascouts

I think my opinion was a "Mainstream" one and that most casual listeners felt the same way. I believe they didn't give the album the second chance I did, and didn't get over that initial shock that colors the whole album.

While I agree with the crux of your post, in that Rumours is more accessible than Tusk in certain ways because its instruments are stated with more clarity where necessary, I still insist that Tusk is in no way totally inaccessible or “weird-for-weird’s-sake”. What it suffered from was mainly the fact that FM had established a core audience all of which could never have given Tusk a proper chance. The recording approaches and the quirkiness came from the punk/new wave bands and in those circles Tusk would have been perfectly accessible. It was just released by a band that was supposed to be the anti-thesis of punk, that’s all.

Anything on Tusk is worthy of “Go Your Own Way” in songwriting, it’s just been recorded and arranged in a different way.

If FM had put the popularly appealing stuff first and then gotten into the rest, it would have been better. Of course perhaps Lindsey was afraid no one would ever play the last half of the album, so he had to intersperse his more unusual stuff throughout, lol. And I believe they've made the same mistake on SYW - putting Murrow and Illume first was idiotic, IMHO. First impressions are the most memorable.

And this is another thing I don’t approve of. I understand your intentions but I personally love it when all the diverse-sounding material is sitting there next to each other. That’s what made the Rumours FM stand out for me first; that they can make their records sound real smooth and there’s still this quirkiness going on. That they can have “WTWCT” and “Murrow”, “Peacekeeper” and “Come”, next to each other and make it seem like it’s natural changes of mood in the human mind. I dislike the fact that albums should be like radio stations in that people shouldn’t be shocked by anything in there, that there should be certain boxes the music should be put into. Albums should reflect life itself, which is never about one or two certain moods. I’m glad Lindsey still thinks that way but then again you can all fight back with your programmable CD-players.

[Cammie]

Kisses to Lindsey for The TUSKER Album!!!
Soo..."No one said Nothin'!!!" Brilliant! Sky